


way down we go

by kerry_shawcross



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe: Superheroes, BRUCE GREENE as LOGAN, ELYSE WILLLEMS as X-23, Gen, Multi, bc i LITERALLY have not stopped thinkin abt logan and i saw it a week ago, i wrote this despite thinking "no one is going to read this", logan!au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-03 07:27:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10238993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kerry_shawcross/pseuds/kerry_shawcross
Summary: Elyse clenches her fists, and the ground rumbles beneath them. Bruce stares, eyes wide as two familiar looking claws shoot out from between her knuckles, glinting bloody in the sunlight.(“What is she?” Bruce asks, voice soft and tired in the car.“She’s like you,” Lawrence murmurs to the back of Bruce’s head, to Bruce’s furrowed brows and the way his knuckles are stained white from how hard he’s gripping the steering wheel. “She’s very much like you.”)[ALoganfic of sorts.]





	1. ACT I

**Author's Note:**

> please refrain from reading if you want to avoid any potentially spoiler-y content from _Logan_!

Bruce wakes up to someone trying to jack his car.

It wouldn’t have bothered him too much if not for the fact that he’d been sleeping in it, or that it was a _lease_ , or for the fact that Bruce was fucking exhausted at this point.

The light of the billboard filtering in between the dusty glass makes Bruce’s bones and muscles ache as he sits up, blinks. The symphony of cars hissing down the highway and the accompaniment of the men fucking with his car. Bruce is tired.

Bruce is burned out, worn out. Bruce feels fucked up, fucked over. He steps out of the car slowly because he feels like his legs might give up on him, blinking the synthetic light and desert dust out of his eyes.

“Hey,” he calls.

The men by his car take two steps back, staring at him.

“Maybe… look, I’ve had a long night. You _don’t_ wanna do this. It’s a lease, okay?” Bruce rubs his eye with one hand, sighing. When the men don’t respond, Bruce says, “I’m gonna,” and then one of them shoots him in the fucking chest with their goddamn _shotgun._

It’s bad. The pain is always bad. He always forgets exactly _how_ bad it is, but he never forgets that it sucks and it knocks the wind out of him, every time. Bruce rolls over onto his back, groaning for air.

 _Son of a bitch._ He’s too fucking tired for this bullshit.

The men cheer, jovially laughing before they go back to his car.

Bruce sits upright, makes the uphill battle to his feet. “ _Hey!”_ He’s _pissed_ now, who the fuck shoots an unarmed guy in the chest to jack his car? Honestly. The men jump back, further this time, unsure what they’re looking at. The first guy--the one who shot him--pumps his shotgun again.

Bruce sighs. Clenches his fist. Feels the familiar ache of his claws extending again, the blood slowly starting to drip down the blade again. The men shout in another language at the sight of it, but keep their guns aimed at him.

It’s going to be a long night.

\--

“Wolverine?”

Out of habit, Bruce looks and immediately wishes he hadn’t.

“I knew it was you,” the man says, standing in the pouring rain, curls matted down to his forehead. “Please, you have to help me--”

Bruce starts to walk away. As fast as fucking possible, he’s tired and he doesn’t particularly want to deal with this right now. The man keeps calling after him, hands wrapped around the thin trenchcoat. “Please! Please, Wolverine! I need your help, _please_.”

“Fuck off, man,” Bruce responds harshly, keeping his back to him, squinting through the rain.

“ _P_ _lease_!” He pleads, “I can give you money!”

“I said fuck off, dude. I don’t want your fucking money.”

“What if I said I could give you fifty-thousand dollars?”

 _That_ stops Bruce. Because the first thought in his head is the boat. The Sunseeker. He’s thinking of the sun beating down on his neck and he can almost _smell_ the ocean.

He turns back to the man. Bruce thinks for a moment, then says, “fuck. _Off.”_ And keeps walking off again.

To his surprise, the man doesn’t follow.

When the man pulls by in his run down white car, Bruce catches a glimpse of a woman sitting in the passenger’s side staring at him. Blonde hair. Eyes like a doe.

\--

Someone in sunglasses and a leather duster enters his car. "As I live and breathe," he says, "the  _Wolverine._ "

The first thing Bruce thinks is: _what a fucking asshole_ but the first thing Bruce says is: “get the fuck out of my car.”

“Whoa there,” the man says, eyes hidden by his baseball cap. “I’m not here for you.”

“Great. Get out of my car.”

The man leans forward, gives a wave of his hand--one that Bruce realizes is not made of flesh, but metal. Each digit moves fluidly, as if they were his real fingers, but. “I’m a big fan, though. _Love_ your stuff. Sad that you’re a junkie now.”

Bruce casts a quick glance at the paper bag in the passenger’s seat next to him. “Who the fuck are you?” 

“Craig Skistimas,” the asshole-- _S_ _kistimas_ \--responds, even smiling when he says it. He traces the inner lining of Bruce’s car with a robotic finger. “I work with SA Corporations. I just have a few questions to ask.”

Wolverine doesn’t really feel like answering any questions, but he also feels like if he doesn’t, Skistimas is going to make his life a whole lot harder. And Bruce is late enough as it is.

“You see a man around lately? His name is _Joel Rubin_. Curly hair. Kinda skinny. Nice man.”

“No,” Bruce answers flatly. 

“He took somethin’ of mine. Something I was responsible for. Something very precious to me.”

Bruce hates this guy, if not for the fact that he’s in his car, then for the fact that he’s acting like a total fucking creep. What a tool. “I didn’t see any man.”

“Hmm,” Skistimas hums, and sits back in his seat. “Well, Joel is on the run from me. And he seems to have his sights set on you, see? Now, I want us to work together, Bruce. You and I, we’re the good guys. So if you see him”--and Skistimas flicks a business card onto Bruce’s seat--“give me a call.” 

Skistimas opens the door to the car, and steps back out into the grey. Bruce picks up the card and reads the words in silver print: _CRAIG SKITISMAS, SA CORPORATIONS. **Fuck.**_

\--

It takes too long for Bruce to get back to the barn. He’d almost forgotten how fucking _dilapidated_ the place looked, then again, he almost forgets every time he leaves.  

The way the landscape seems like a fucking desert, something straight out of a Western movie. Blue skies stretching endlessly into the horizon. Sprawling sands and the occasional cacti, bushes. Tumbleweeds. The train that whistles past the house every so often, making everything inside rattle.

Bruce climbs out of the car to wrench the gate open, gets back in and drives the car through, and then gets out again to close the metal gate behind him.

He looks out of place here, in his two-piece suit. But there’s blood leaking out of his brow and his dress shirt--the third one this time--is ruined with bullet holes. Bruce parks the car by the side of the house and is nearly relieved when he steps back into the cool shade of the building. 

\-- 

James squirrels through the white paper bag the minute Bruce drops it on the table, fingers combing and searching for the pill bottle. 

Bruce sits down. Pours himself a drink. Thinks about how much his fucking chest hurts from where those assholes fired three bullets into it--thinks about how it shouldn’t.

He’s not looking anymore, but Bruce knows he’s watching himself die.

“This isn’t the correct amount,” he hears Peake mutter from his spot beside James. “It won’t be enough to get him through the night.”

Bruce doesn’t respond. Peake gently places the bottle by his hand.

“He says he’s been communicating with someone. I thought the tank was supposed to stop that.”

“It is,” James hisses, enough to make Bruce have to fight a flinch. “The pills aren’t gonna be strong enough either. The dosage isn’t correct--Bruce, did you read the labels?”

Peake turns the bottle towards him. Bruce stares at it, pretends he’s taking it in. 

“Bruce?”

“I _know_ ,” Bruce heaves between a swig of his scotch.

“And?” James asks, arms crossed over his chest.

“I wasn’t really in a position to complain, James.” He puts his hands together. The Wolverine is too tired to deal with this--too fucking _old_ . He’d make the two of them do this, if it weren’t for the fact that Peake is wanted for whatever the fuck he did twenty years ago--he won’t tell any of them what it was--and James is the only one Bruce trusts enough to hold Lawrence down when it comes to giving him his meds. _So._

“So give him more money,” presses James, a frown on his face, blue eyes cutting deep _deep_ in Bruce’s skin more than any blade could. “I know you’ve got some hidden away somewhere.”

Bruce bristles. Shifts, but doesn’t turn to look at James. Says, “I’m saving it. So we can get out of here.”

“ _We_ ,” James responds blankly. “You mean you and him? So you can buy a boat and float around on the ocean? I don’t think you’re about to cart two illegal mutants across the border in your trunk like fucking refugees.”

The Wolverine doesn’t respond, just pours himself more alcohol. The room is filled suddenly with a heavy silence, because Bruce is thinking and James is thinking and Peake is just Peake. Non-disruptive.

“It’s your turn, Bruce,” James finally says, quietly, barely above a whisper. “I’ve had a rough night.”

“That’s gotta suck for you,” Bruce mutters bitterly, and scoops up the pill bottle and paper bag, leaving his cup behind as he exits the darkness of the barn and enters the light.

\--

Bruce heads up to the tank, spending the five minute buffer that’s outside in the blistering sun, squinting at the rusting metal shelter. Lawrence is babbling wildly about something to do with code and programming, limping back and forth--good use that was.

Bruce curses out James again and takes a big step towards Lawrence. “Larr,” calls Bruce, and Lawrence stops limping only to smile at him.

“You--you know there’s someone--I found someone, I found someone… they’ve been communicating to me… like Adam,” and Lawrence crouches over again, Bruce doing his best not to flinch at the name.

 "Lawrence,” Bruce echoes, and Lawrence steps around him, circling the expanse of the tank again, about as fast as someone limping can go. “Lawrence.”

Lawrence doesn’t stop, only limps a little faster. Bruce takes the needle out of the bag and fills it with Lawrence’s medicine. He flicks the needle habitually to get any air bubbles out, taking the few extra steps over to the rambling man.

“Lawrence,” Bruce says again, grabbing the other’s arm roughly only to have him yank it away to continue pacing. Bruce speeds up behind him. Grabs his arm again. Lawrence reaches back and shoves and Bruce pulls and Lawrence lets go to try to maintain balance and trips to the floor, falling on his back, suddenly shaking and convulsing against the concrete.

The air grows thick and heavy and Bruce’s ears start to _ring_ and everything shakes like Lawrence’s seizure but is immeasurably still and Bruce fights against rolling waves of pain clenches his fist around the needle and fights off push after push of static in his brain--

\--and he takes one step _two steps_ over to Lawrence’s body shaking on the floor like a fucking dead leaf and he slowly, painstakingly brings the needle down and pushes through the layers of skin and tired flesh--

\--Lawrence collapses against the concrete and Bruce has to do everything in his power not to buckle under the sudden weight of his own body again, to not fall on top of Lawrence.

He pulls the needle out in a single motion. Lawrence gasps for air and Bruce picks him up. Carrying him as if he’d always done so (he had).

Bruce puts him down on the bed, picks up the pill bottle. He shakes out two blue pills into the palm of his hand. “Take them,” he says flatly, and then deposits them into the other’s palm. When he turns around with a glass of water to find Lawrence staring blankly at them, Bruce says, “want me to blow on ‘em to make ‘em safe?”

Lawrence snarks, “fuck you, Bruce,” and takes the glass of water before downing the pills.

“So you do remember me.”

“I always remember you,” and Lawrence sounds genuine this time, sipping his water. “I just don’t always recognize you.”

Bruce sighs. Pulls the blanket up around Lawrence’s legs and hesitates, just for a moment, before he sits on the bed next to him. Lays down, puts his arm up as a pillow for Lawrence, even. Bruce may still be the Wolverine, but he’s not completely heartless like they say he is--like he claims he is.

A moment passes, Lawrence and Bruce just breathing in tandem. Bruce can feel Lawrence’s face pressing against his chest, probably smelling Bruce’s lack of showers and the surplus of people he’s injured these past few hours.

Lawrence is the first to break the silence. “You’re an asshole.”

Bruce sighs against the crown of Lawrence’s head, not closing his eyes for fear that if he did, he wouldn’t be able to open them out of exhaustion.

“--leaving me here with those fucking assholes. You know James can deadlift but hasn’t been able to since we moved here? _I_ know because he won’t fucking stop talking about it.”

“Peake’s great, though,” tries Bruce, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

“Neither of them listen to me,” Lawrence continues, “neither of them will bring me the new seasons of _Terrace House._ ”

“They can’t leave.” But it's more like  _if they do, they can't come back._

“And apparently they threw away all my gaming systems too.” Bruce scans the expanse of the tank, and finds that Lawrence is right--all his gaming consoles are missing from their rightful place. “It’s cause I tried to wrestle James last time,” he says by way of explanation, Bruce bites down on his lip to stifle the smile.

Bruce presses his chin on the top of Lawrence’s head, closing his eyes. Lawrence smells like sweat and fear and like rusting metal. Bruce can’t complain--he doesn’t remember the last time he had a proper shower. There’s a softer silence then, not quite as sharp as the ones Wolverine shared back in the barn with Colossus and Peake just then. It’s nice. It’s simple.

Things are hardly ever simple for them anymore.

“I’ve found someone else like us,” Lawrence whispers, after a long silence, into the crook of Bruce’s arm.

Bruce stiffens. “There are no more mutants, Lawrence.” He says this harshly and bluntly, because he needs Lawrence to believe him, because he’s had false hope too many times, because it’s been _14 years_ without any mutant births.

Their kind is going extinct.

“There haven’t been. Not for 14 years.”

“We can get them back,” Lawrence pushes, “we can bring it back.”

Bruce is so fucking tired lately, just _so tired_. He feels like there’s three years of sleep deprivation sitting on his eyelids, as if he’s about to collapse into a dreamless sleep. Bruce can’t remember the last time he’s slept without a nightmare chasing after him like a demon on his back. He keeps running and running but not going anywhere--the point of running is to _go away_ but he’s not going anywhere--he’s stuck here because…

Because James is here, because James is wanted for killing a few others in Westchester and it wasn’t the first time or the last. Because Peake is hiding from his demons, because Peake is the only one who can stick around to keep James out of trouble and heal Lawrence’s superficial wounds.

Because Lawrence is here.

Because Lawrence is dying. And because Bruce knows that--it’s why he’s saving up. He wants to get them out of here. Maybe buy a big boat--the Sunseeker--and live out the rest of their days on the ocean.

Bruce is tired and everything _hurts_ lately, a little too achy and blinding for his own liking. His blood feels acidic and his throat burns. He feels like his body is finally, _finally_ giving up on him, finally feels brutally human, plagued by mortality. He feels like he’s stuck in this body and he wants to go home, but there is _no_ home. He’s stuck here.

Bruce is getting punched in the face by life a lot lately, taking hit after hit and he doesn’t know how much longer he can last-- 

\--but then he sees Lawrence sitting on a boat with the sun behind him, with a smile on his face. James next to him, Peake on the deck. The water like crystals on the backs of their heads, and Bruce takes every hit life throws at him, looks at them and thinks: _maybe one more._

Lawrence is still talking. “I’ve been communicating--” and that’s when Bruce feels like he’s about to hurl, so he sits up quickly before he throws up. “Bruce. I’ve been communicating to someone. Someone like--”

Bruce lowers his voice to a growl. “ _No_ ,” he bites, “stop it.” The name is a sore spot, for both of them. Bruce isn’t sure if he’s ready to hear it again, even after so long.

Bruce feels a cold hand brush his forearm, Lawrence’s clammy grip holding him there. “We took you in, Bruce. Gave you a family. Gave you a purpose. We can help them too.” Bruce yanks his arm again, keeps his back to the other.

Bruce says, “the world is different now, Lawrence,” and only that. He stands up and walks to the door of the tank.

“Bruce.”

Lawrence’s voice. At the back of his neck.

“Bruce,” Lawrence calls again, voice a whisper, and Bruce hovers by the door. Hesitant, almost. “Bruce, what have you done?”

Bruce doesn’t answer; pushes open the door and feels the heat of the sun push itself back on his face. He steps out and shuts the door behind him without another word.

\--

“Bruce, when you asked me to help I was more than happy to,” Peake begins, before James shouts _yeah, not like we had any other choice!_ which is enough to earn him a glare from the former. “But you have to tell me things. Something’s happening to you. You’re sick.”

Bruce bristles, hunching over his glass again, hands together.

“Those wounds that aren’t fully healing. You keep drinking to fight the pain. Something inside of you is making you sick… There’s--pus dripping from your claws.”

Bruce wants to grab Peake by the wrists and tell him to stop. He knows Peake knows and what Peake knows James is sure to know at some point. He’s hit a nerve, now; Bruce knows of his own deteriorating condition and could do without the reminder. Bruce also knows that Peake would probably try to heal him if Bruce gave the word--but this is more like a mortal wound, an eternal sickness. Peake’s abilities would only be enough to defuse the sickness for a day, two at the most.

Bruce wants to grab Peake by the wrists and ask him to stop fucking with his head, wants to shove James against a wall and tell him he’s fucking sorry but there’s nothing he can do--but James would probably like that, so maybe not.

“I’m not even going to mention the fact that you can’t read the label on the pill bottle,” Peake adds, as non-intrusively as Peake can be. “I found _this_ in your pocket.”

Peake unfurls his fist on the table. A metal cylinder rolls out, clinks to a stop against Bruce’s glass. Bruce swipes it up before James can, but not before James is on him again, brows furrowed, words coming out half-snarled.

“Was that an adamantium bullet?” There’s that familiar angry tone again--Bruce had been hearing a lot of it lately. “Are you keeping that in your pocket because you’re planning to blow your fucking brains out?”

“ _Fuck off_ , James,” Bruce growls in return, low and defensive.

“--you’re dying,” Peake adds, and it’s enough to make Bruce clench his fists, close his eyes. “You won’t let me help you.” And he reaches his hand out, just to touch Bruce’s wrist--

\--but Bruce whips his hand away, knocking Peake’s mug into the wall and shattering it in the process.

“That was my favourite mug.”

Bruce stands up. Puts the pills back in his pocket and picks up his coat. He walks out into the night, and doesn’t look back once.

\--

His knuckles bleed every time his claws come out, that's just the way it's always been. Bruce figures that's normal, considering his hands weren't exactly designed for blades of metal to come protruding out of them every time he willed them to. 

But never to this volume. Not to this extent. 

It's not a pain he adjusts to. Bruce looks at his left hand, the way two of the blades are at a normal length and the one stunted one. Stuck in his knuckle--like an ingrown nail. 

He winces, gripping the top of them with his free hand and  _pulling._ It's slow and it's taking too long it's taking too long--

\--the claw slips back out. More blood, slicking the claw. Bruce sits back in his seat and checks his rearview mirror. Closes his eyes. 

\--

"Who's bag is this?" James demands, standing in front of Bruce's open trunk. Bruce squints at him in the morning light, at the bag James is holding up in one of his hands. Blue eyes as piercing and as bright as the sky behind him. He tosses the bag to the former, who stares at the backpack observantly. He's never seen it before.

"I dunno," Bruce shrugs, right as a pipe flies past his face. 

James powers up, immediately shifting into metal. 

Bruce looks up at the source, picks up the pipe at his feet and raises it. A woman emerges from behind the pile of junk, looking small and slight. Bruce thinks he recognizes her face from somewhere, her hair--

“Bruce! Bruce,” chastises Lawrence, suddenly, from his spot at the fence, with Peake beside him. “This is Elyse--she’s the mutant I’ve been telling you about. Uh, _nous sommes… nous ne sommes pas dangereux._ _Viens ici…_ ”

James shifts back, skin reverting to the same flesh and muscle as he usually was. The woman-- _Elyse_ \--takes a couple of steps closer to Lawrence, but stops in front of Bruce. She reaches forward suddenly, hands snapping out and closing the space between them--grabbing the bag in his hands and yanking it towards her.

Surprised, Bruce tightens his grip on the bag, but Elyse has such a sudden pull that the backpack leaves his hands.

“ _C’est bien,_ ” Lawrence keeps murmuring, _"_ _oui, oui, viens ici. C’est bien_ ,” he says again, taking her arm when she gets close enough. “ _J_ _e suis Lawrence. C’est bien._ ”

Peake wheels Lawrence away, spares a look at Bruce when they leave, but James hovers by the truck. Bruce emits a low groan, putting his hands on his face and wondering how the fuck they went from a mansion in LA to this shithole.

James says, “Lawrence knew she was coming,” and only that.

Bruce is waiting for an explanation, but it never comes, so he says, “she’s not a fucking _mutant_ .” _Mutants are dead,_ he doesn’t say, _and we should be too._

“So what? Are you going to do something about it?”

Bruce doesn’t feel like fighting James, because he thinks James might get off on that. It’s been a long time. If Bruce misses James, then James _definitely_ misses Bruce--if not for Bruce himself, then for the bodily contact that he’s able to get from him.

Maybe James has always seen this coming, and that’s why he hides his separation anxiety better. Or it’s less acute. Hard to tell.

Bruce says, “a man approached me earlier today. Said I needed to help him or some shit--when he drove off, _she_ was in the backseat. And then later, at the hospital… some douchebag in sunglasses got in my backseat. Asking if that guy had come for me.” Bruce thinks for a moment. There’s sweat coating the back of his neck and his forehead.

"Bounty hunter?" James asks, but Bruce can't answer because he genuinely doesn't know. Just stands with his hands on his face, feeling the heat beat mercilessly down on them both. He wonders if James cools down by turning into metal--reflecting light, and all. 

Bruce shrugs again.

“You think that the girl’s nothing but trouble,” James supplies, and Bruce finally, _finally_ looks at him. It’s almost a big mistake; James can read Bruce better than anyone else, and looking at him has done nothing but make the ache in Bruce’s chest burn more.

James is wearing that ridiculous orange t-shirt with the gorilla on it. Bruce wants to close his eyes but he can’t, he can’t.

James sighs, squinting up at a spot behind Bruce. He takes a step forward, and for a quick moment, Bruce thinks James might kiss him or punch him.

James does neither. He claps a hand on Bruce’s arm and says, “I’m gonna go fix the fence,” before walking off in the direction of the barbed wire surrounding the land.

\--

Elyse sits inside eating a bowl Cheerios, Lawrence’s gaze trained on her less like a hawk, more like an admirer. “ _C’est bien_ ,” he keeps muttering, “ _c’est bien_.”

Bruce takes a gamble, reaches for the girl’s bag sitting on the table. Again, Elyse reflexively snaps out, tugging the bag back towards her, surprisingly strong.

“Bruce,” Lawrence calls, tone cautioning. “Bruce,” he says again, and Bruce finally relents, enough for Elyse to quickly snatch her backpack back. “ _I_ _l na pas…_ bad.”

Bruce rolls his eyes. Considers pouring himself a drink. Asks, “where’s Peake?”

Lawrence makes a non-committal gesture. “Went to get my meds.”

The house starts to shake and rumble a little bit and he has enough time to note the sudden jump Elyse has when the train rolls by.

Lawrence reaches two hands out towards her, hands placating. “No, no, c’est un…” A pause, and then, “un _train_. A choo choo.”

Elyse sits back. Bruce fights the urge to roll his eyes again, casting a quick glance at the security camera feed on the small tv by the counter.

Bruce’s blood runs cold. It is most certainly _not_ a choo choo.

Three armored trucks rolling up, in the horizon. He looks out the window, between the makeshift and moth-eaten curtain. Little black trucks, sparkling in the sunlight.

Bruce curses under his breath and turns back to Lawrence, muttering, “we gotta go,” and putting his hands on Lawrence’s wheelchair.

“Uh,” Lawrence starts, as Bruce is already wheeling him out, “we’ll be back--we’ll come back, Elyse! Don’t worry--”

On the way out, Bruce reaches over and snags Elyse’s backpack. She doesn’t fight back, just mindlessly stands and follows after them.

\--

“Bruce,” Lawrence murmurs, “Bruce--the cars. The cars.”

Bruce looks up in time to see three armored trucks coming down the path, gleaming black like chunks of obsidian in the sun. The sun beats down on the back of his neck, and he squints towards the horizon as he hastily helps Lawrence into the car.

“Get back inside,” Bruce calls. It’s not a question. It’s an order. When he turns to find that Elyse is still standing there in front of the barn, looking like a deer lost in the headlights, he repeats himself, tacking on a sharp, “ _now!”_ which is enough to cause her to break into a run.

Bruce smells gunpowder in the air when Skistimas steps out of the armored truck. His heels kick up dust when he walks over. Bruce has a sinking feeling in his chest that whispers _he knows, he knows, he knows_ , but he can’t see Skistimas’ eyes behind the sunglasses so he tells himself to relax.

Skistimas says, “nice place you’ve got here,” and already Bruce wants to slit his fucking throat. “Wonder where you’re hiding the old man. Sonntag? Maybe he’s in there…” and he points to the decrepit barn with the end of his pistol, “... or maybe in that ol’ water tower there. That’d be smart, wouldn’t it?”

“Get the _fuck_ off my property,” Bruce growls, warning, predatory. He’s got his feet planted and his hands balled into fists, the handle of Elyse’s backpack digging into his palm.

“C’mon now, Bruce,” Skistimas calls, “I don’t want there to be any bad blood between us. I don’t want Sonntag.”

“Then why are you here?” Bruce knows why. Bruce knows he wants Elyse.

Skistimas smiles. “You know why.” Bruce knows why.  “Where’s the girl?” Bruce knows he wants Elyse.

“What girl?”

“The girl whose bag you’re holding.”

Bruce doesn’t miss a beat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is my bag. There isn’t a girl here.”

“You and I both know that ain’t true.”

Bruce doesn’t move a single inch from his spot. “There isn’t fucking a girl here.” It’s not completely a lie, and Bruce’s eyes don’t even flicker from Skistimas’, so Bruce thinks for a moment, there doesn’t have to be any violence--any bloodshed.

Silence. The desert wind howls around them, whips sand and dust and Skistimas’ coat around him. Skistimas gives a wave with one of his hands and several of the men behind him raise their guns.

“I’m gonna count to three,” Skistimas starts, and Bruce feels his claws unsheathe themselves, the metal brutally shoving itself through worn tissue to fully extend. He bites down on his tongue to keep from crying out.

Skistimas casts a disdainful gaze at Bruce’s fists, the metal blades protruding from between his knuckles. Three long claws, dripping with blood. He tuts, takes a step forward. “Don’t be like this,” he says, lips already forming Bruce’s name, but that’s as far as he gets because Bruce swipes at him and slashes through the thick vest on Skistimas’ chest.

Gunshots ring through the air as Bruce rounds on the others closing in around him, swinging his fists and cutting off one man’s head, another’s arm, a leg, a hand. Bruce knocks another one down by punching him straight in the chest, watching as the blades come back out bloody before they find their way into another man’s jugular. He slashes at someone’s chest but they open fire at his arm, knocking him off balance with the force of the bullet.

Fuck, he’s getting too old for this bullshit--

Someone hits him in the face with the butt of their gun hard enough for to bring him to his knees and he swipes blindly at their legs, catching _someone_ before he’s kicked in the back of the skull. The men crowd around him while he’s down, several of them stomping down on his wrists, his shoulders to keep him down.

Bruce coughs in a vain attempt to get the dust out of his lungs. His heart beats in his ears too loudly for him to focus, the sun in his eyes being obscured as Skistimas appears then, standing over him.

“Go get the girl,” Skistimas says, gun pointing directly to the barn.

\--

Bruce wonders if James can hear him, even from that far away. He twists under the feet of the men over him, but they stamp down and he’s pretty sure there’s a bullet wound there somewhere because it _hurts_.

An eternity passes between when the men had entered the barn. Bruce is almost worried, just a minute, that one of them might emerge with Elyse’s head.

That is, until he hears the gunshots ringing out.

Skistimas reacts, takes half a step forward. The men let their guards down enough for Bruce to sit up, but not enough for Bruce to get loose, because someone fires their gun into his shoulder and brings him back down.

From the darkness of the rusted barn, a figure emerges.

Elyse clenches her fists, and the ground rumbles beneath them. Bruce stares, eyes wide as two claws shoot out from between her knuckles, glinting bloody in the sunlight.

“No,” Skistimas says, as Elyse slowly approaches them, taking step after wretched step, “no no no _no_ \--”

The men around Skistimas raise their guns, and Skistimas says, “no,” again before they start firing their guns in a panicked manner at her. The blonde shows no fear as she leaps forward at the gunmen, claws swiping at them, painstakingly removing an arm; a leg; cutting open a throat.

The men keep firing at her, despite Skistimas’ cries of protest, and Elyse scoops up her forgotten bag before jumping up on the garbage bin and ascending a fence in one leap, going back into the barn.

“Stop _shooting!”_ Skistimas yells, as the gunfire dies. “She can **heal**.” He turns to the other men around him, says, “stay on him!” and gestures to the others around him before running off towards the building.

Bruce starts thinking _fast_ , trying to process the most advantageous position to destroy these six men when suddenly he hears more gunshots ring out. These ones are closer, and Bruce angles his head just enough to look between the feet of the men to see something glinting in the sunlight--

\-- _James_.

James’ silver body gleaming in the sunlight like some gaudy car, every single beam of light reflecting off him and bouncing _everywhere_. Like a disco ball. Bruce corrects himself: James--or Colossus, sorry, he was powered up-- _i_ _s_ a disco ball.

A bullet pings off James and clatters against the metal of the fences, another hits one of the men directly above Bruce.

Time almost freezes and moves faster than Bruce can perceive because then he’s on his feet again, claws slicing through military-grade uniforms and kicking the gunmen down.

Through the furious blood pumping in his ears, the gunshots and Bruce’s own yells of rage, he dimly registers someone laughing. James?

“Peake!” Bruce screams, throwing the body of one of the men into another, “Where is he?”

James doesn’t answer, just punches a guy vaguely into the direction of the car. Lawrence waves at him when he looks, points to Peake next to him, and Bruce has to fight the urge to give them the middle finger **while** fighting a man. It’s a hard life.

Bruce catches himself thinking _it’s just like old times_ with a side of glee, because it’s _not_ like old times. Far from it, actually. Because--

\--well. There are a lot of reasons why. Bruce doesn’t really wanna think about it.

He manages makes his way to the car, screaming for James all the while. By the time James enters, the gunshots that were coming from inside have travelled outside, and Bruce sees Elyse still fighting off a horde of men in black.

“Wait, Bruce,” Lawrence insists, when they get in, “don’t forget about Elyse, we can’t forget about Elyse--”

Bruce ignores him. Starts the car right as the first bullets start to hit the window.

“We can’t leave Elyse behind--”

As if on cue, Elyse starts screaming, blood-curdling screeches. Two men are starting to drag her by her arms towards Skistimas, and Bruce watches as a claw shoots out from her shoe and she swings her leg back to kick at her feet. That man drops her, and Elyse is quick to disarm the other, stabbing fast and thoroughly with the claws in her hand.

“What is she?” Bruce asks, running over several more of Skistimas’ minions.

“She’s like you,” Lawrence murmurs to the back of Bruce’s head, to Bruce’s furrowed brows and the way his knuckles are stained white from how hard he’s gripping the steering wheel. “She’s very much like you.”

Bruce drives directly towards the group gathering around an enraged Elyse, knocking over three of them, and nearly Elyse as well. Somehow, she rolls over and ends up on the hood of the car, staring Bruce directly in the eyes.

Bruce stares into Elyse, and a reflection of himself stares back.

He gives the most imperceptible of nods to her, and Elyse scrambles up the windshield as Bruce starts the car again, Elyse diving in the vehicle through the sunroof.

She puts her arm behind Lawrence’s head immediately as the gunshots kick off again, screaming when one pierces through the glass and into her flesh. Elyse doesn’t miss a beat, lifting the wound to her mouth and spitting out a bullet.

James stares, says something that Bruce doesn’t hear--but knowing James it was probably, “that’s one hardcore _bitch_ ,” or something else smart that only he would find funny in the moment.

“Hold on!” Bruce yells, heart beating too fast--god he’s getting _way_ too old for this--and slams on the gas. Bruce hears Lawrence chuckle right as they collide headfirst into the fence.

Fucking James, with his decent fence repair jobs--and there are suddenly Skistimas’ minions materializing on _motorbikes_ before them--

\--Bruce backs up, fence still attached to his grill, wheels screeching along the dust as he bumps into the motorcyclists, half of them hitting the chainlink fence and flipping. Bruce slams the car into forward again, running over the fence and taking off out of the surrounded area--

\--in the distance, a rumble. The train passing by. Bruce sees an opening quickly closing and hits the gas, turning to drive dangerously close to the train--

\--behind him, glass shattering as motorcyclists punch the bullet-ridden glass of the car, hands reaching in, threatening to rip Elyse out of the car; Elyse’s screams filling the vehicle as she stabs them in the arms, as James yanks one down from his bike--

\--Bruce pushes the car, inching forward bit by bit, Skistimas’ own truck fast approaching beside them, looming. Bruce yanks the steering wheel to his left _hard_ and slams Skistimas into the engine of the train before barely skidding over the tracks and landing on the other side.

There’s this infinity. A long, breathless moment where Bruce and Skistimas are separated by less than 20 feet. Skistimas steps out of his truck, looks down the horizon to find an end to a seemingly endless train.

Skistimas smiles. A threat hidden between thin lips. Bruce doesn’t waste a single moment as he turns the car around and disappears into the line where blue sky hits the desert. 

  
It’s going to be a long day.

 

 


	2. ACT II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> long chapter. please refrain from reading if you want to avoid any potentially spoiler-y logan content!

The second Elyse is out of the car, James is rifling through her backpack, searching for something, _anything_. He pulls out a map, a duotang, several comic books--”we got ourselves an FH fan!”--a stuffed envelope and a phone. Wordlessly handing the last over to Bruce, James flips through the comic book, chewing his lip all the while.

“Those are bullshit,” Bruce mutters, “about a quarter of it happened and it wasn’t like _that_ ,” he adds, only for James to wave him off.

Bruce rolls his eyes and goes to turn on the phone, surprised at the lack of a password. There’s a video queued up on it; the face of the curly-haired man, the one who had been with Elyse, looming on the screen, expression dark and foreboding.

“My name is Joel Rubin,” he says, to the camera, “and if you are watching this video, it means I’m dead.”

Bruce glances at James, who has turned his full attention to the phone now. Peake and Lawrence are sitting forward, Bruce angles the phone towards them a little more for better visibility.

The video cuts away from Joel’s face to a shot of a building with _SA Corporations_ on the side. “I worked as a nurse for the SA Corporations for years. What I’m about to show you is illegal in the United States. In Canada.” There’s shaky footage from behind a door--a group of young adults lining up and disappearing behind another set of doors.

“We were told we were researching cures for cancers,” Joel says, as more footage of these people flicker across the screen. “Instead, they’ve been taking these adults--training them and experimenting on them, often times using the DNA of mutants. Most of these people are volunteers who were poor and had no other choice--had terminal illnesses,” and there’s shot after shot of the mentioned people, standing behind barred doors and staring out at the camera. “They were promised good health. They were promised a second chance. To be good. 

An image of Elyse flashes on screen and holds there. Elyse, unconscious on an operating table, with a respirator on. Elyse, with doctors crowding around her; Elyse with stitches up her legs and arms, two claws protruding from her unclenched fist.

“There is nothing more tempting than the chance to get better. To _be_ better.”

Bruce looks away. Stares out the window at where Elyse is standing, brows furrowed at the pinball machine.

“The ones who opposed--the ones who realized they no longer wanted to do this, didn’t want to fight… they had their memories erased. But this meant that... they had forgotten _why_ they wanted to do this; why they were alive. They had forgotten the hate, the drive to be better.”

Bruce turns back in time to see the camera quickly approaching someone crouching in the corner of a bright lit room. On screen, Bruce hears Joel’s voice whisper _fille_ , as Elyse turns to look at him, arm bleeding.

“A soldier who will not fight is useless.”

Joel’s face, on screen again. “Then, a little while after, they were working on something. Something big--something better than the people. Something that would never ask questions; never forget its allegiance. Never forget. I guess it must have worked, because one day” --and the video rapidly cuts to screaming, people being dragged out of their rooms, others being shot, Skitismas wielding a cattle prod-- “they started euthanizing them.”

The video cuts to black, and as sudden as it had, cuts back to Joel’s hand carrying a key card as he scans it, waiting for a _beep_ , yelling “go! _Fuis!”_ all the while. More screaming, guards in black running after them as the camera shakes unsteadily as Joel runs through the halls. He comes to a stop as a guard approaches a woman in front of him--only for the woman to raise her hands and disintegrate him into a fine pulp.

Joel’s tired face on the screen again; the calm after the storm. Bruce notices, for the first time, a blonde figure lying on the bed behind Joel, face turned away, fast asleep.

He’s silent for a long moment.

“There is a place,” he finally says, voice tired and small and broken. “In North Dakota. Where they’re supposed to meet. If we-- _you_ can get her there, then she is home free.”

Another pause, and then Joel continues. “I don’t have fifty-thousand dollars for you. That was a lie. Guess it didn’t work very well, did it?” Joel gives a pained smile, and holds up an envelope to the camera. The same one in James’ hand, with penciled coordinates scrawled small and tight. “This is all we have. Twenty thousand. It’s yours if you can get her there.”

It hurts, almost, as if every word Joel said threatened to rip the heart from his chest. “She is not related to me. She barely remembers me.”

Joel stares into the camera, and Bruce knows in his bones, his brain, his _heart_ , there is no possible way Joel is actually looking at him but it still **hurts**. Like Joel is talking to him; like Adam is talking to him.

(Adam.

 _Adam doesn’t remember them either._ )

“She is not related to me,” Joel continues, after a shaky breath, tears in his eyes, “but I love her. You may not love her, but she has your DNA. Your blood coursing through her veins. Your powers.”

Bruce feels something cold and slippery shaking in his stomach; threatening to make residence in his throat.

“Please,” he hears Joel’s voice plead, “help her. You’re the only one who can.” Joel blinks fast, eyes glistening. He reaches forward and the video ends.

Bruce sits back in his seat, feeling more drained than he’s felt in _weeks,_ body aching. If this were two years ago, he might’ve even tried to make a _help me, Obi-Wan Greene, you’re my only hope_ joke, but lately even the jokes have been sapped out of him. That familiar sense of feeling like he doesn’t belong is boiling in his stomach again.

He just wants to go _home_.

“Who is she?” Bruce asks, for what feels like the first time but isn’t. Lawrence doesn’t answer this time, sinking into the backseat cramped next to Peake.

James murmurs, “your daughter,” under his breath, and Bruce pretends not to hear him. Even if she _was_ his kid--because Bruce had already considered this--there was no way she was nearly his age already. She must be twenty-five at the very least.

Yet, she looks so much younger, standing in the gas station, burgundy hoodie torn and dirtied; jeans ripped. Bruce closes his eyes and it’s not the first time, nor is it the last.

“She’s like you, Bruce,” Lawrence’s voice curling like smoke against his neck, wrapping around Bruce’s throat and threatening to choke the breath from his lungs. “Whether you like it or not.”

“I’m not taking her to fucking North Dakota,” Bruce deadpans, throwing the phone back into her bag.

“Bruce,” Lawrence says, as James adds, “let’s just take the money and go.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” demands Lawrence to an impassive James, who only shrugs in response. “She needs our help, Bruce.”

“Not my problem,” Bruce responds. James waves the envelope in his face before Peake’s hand materializes between the front seats and snatches it back. James _hmphs_ in protest as Peake hurriedly collects the other items; the map, the phone, and places it back into Elyse’s backpack. As he struggles to free the comic books from James’ death grip, the duotang slips across James’ lap into Bruce’s before it falls into the spot by his feet.

There’s a picture of Elyse paper clipped to the top right corner, stare blank and straight. Beneath her name are the serial numbers starting with _X-23._ Bruce traces the words detailing her history; her abilities; the DNA running through her listed as _BRUCE PAUL GREENE_  and he turns back up to see her getting increasingly frustrated with the pinball machine.

Joel’s words echoing in Bruce’s brain. The image of Adam somehow rattling in there; Lawrence’s. The car smells like metal and sweat and desert heat. Bruce can’t take it anymore. He runs a hand through his greasy hair.

“Bruce,” he hears Lawrence call again, and Bruce grits his teeth, undoing his seatbelt. “ _Bruce_ ,” he says again.

“Shut the fuck up,” Bruce hisses at him, getting out of the car and slamming the door shut.

“I need to go pee.”

\--

Bruce watches Elyse grip the pinball machine until her knuckles are near white; until the metal starts to protrude--

\--Bruce slots another dollar in the machine.

“One more game,” he says, tone stern. Elyse turns away from him, knuckles flat and smooth again, and back to the flashing lights and whirring noises.

\--

“I can do it myself!” Lawrence yells as Bruce lifts him in one swift motion from his wheelchair to the toilet, tugs down his jeans and boxers to his ankles.

Bruce steps back, one forearm resting on the stall as he looks around, stares at his own disheveled reflection in the dirty sink. Still in that bloody dress shirt and dusty suit.

“I can’t go with you standing there,” calls Lawrence again, and Bruce rolls his eyes.

“Trust me, I’m not lookin’.” _Not like you don’t want me to_ , Bruce catches himself thinking, and wonders if it’s really been that long. ( _It has._ )

He thinks he hears James wolf-whistle, but he swears it must have been his imagination. And even if it wasn’t, it still makes Bruce crack a smile--feeling almost unfamiliar and forgotten.

\--

Bruce steps out of the bathroom in time to see Elyse grab a man by his arm and flip him on his back with no effort. He rushes forward and snatches her arm before she can slice a man’s face in half.

“ _No,_ ” Bruce unintentionally scolds, grip tightening around Elyse’s wrist. “We don’t do that.”

Elyse stares up at him, a pair of aviators shielding him from her gaze.

Bruce looks down at the man on the ground, says, “I’m so sorry,” thinks for a moment, then asks, “do you guys sell protein shakes?”

\--

The decision he arrives at is only possible after Bruce sits in the silence of the car for two hours once everyone’s fallen asleep.

When he was young, Bruce had woken up strapped down to a table with no memory of where he’d come from; who he was. He’d killed everyone who did that to him, fought for that knowledge. It’s hard to remember a time in his life _before_ Adam and Lawrence saved him--before the scuffed knees and the bloody knuckles.

Living in the mansion in LA was tough too, house feeling filled but not quite whole at the same time. James was wily and unruly like teenage boys _are_ , and Bruce had always been that age but now he was in that weird state where he was falling behind Lawrence and Adam--aging faster and faster almost--and where James was starting to outpace him. And then Peake came along, and everything _fit_ all of a sudden. Bruce had never felt so whole.

Like he’d never be alone.

This is where Lawrence would blame himself for getting _greedy_ , building Cerebro and tracking mutant after mutant because he needed that, he needed that school to be bigger, needed to feel like part of something more--

\--but Bruce doesn’t blame him.

( _Adam still walks away_ , no matter how you try to describe it. Bruce could point fingers at himself, at Lawrence, James and Peake. Doesn’t change the fact that Adam leaves them that day, takes a chunk of each of them with him.)

Things had fallen apart, since then. Bruce doesn’t like going back to LA, afraid of the _what happened to you?_ following him around like a demon on his back. He listens to the familiar sleepy breaths of everyone around him and stares out of the car.

Bruce isn’t young anymore. He’s lost a lot. He still has a family. He can’t lose them too.

If Bruce was going to take this girl to North Dakota, they were going to need new clothes. A new car.

The sound of Lawrence’s _What have you done, Bruce?_ plays in his head like an old song on the radio as he turns the keys into ignition.

\--

Someplace along the Oklahoma neon-sign tinged streets, Bruce notices Elyse getting up and pressing her hands against the car window, still wearing the sunglasses, staring outside at the lights passing by. In front of her, James looks out the same side, noticing she’s awake, and whispers, “it’s like the East Side’s _Vegas_. But with more virgins than back at the mansion.”

Bruce bites down on his smile, checking on the fast asleep Lawrence and Peake in his mirror.

“You remember _My Summer Car_ , Bruce?” James asks, stretching his arms above his head. “God, this is like that roadtrip I always wanted. Me, you. Mom and Dad,” he adds, with a thumb jerk to the two males sleeping behind him.

“And your sister,” Bruce deadpans, and James lets out a stifled laugh.

He lifts his protein drink up to his face and shakes it a little bit before unscrewing the lid. “She looks nothing like me,” James murmurs, and Bruce lets out half a noise in disagreement.

“Similar bone structures,” he says by way of explanation, and James furrows his brows. Noting the expression that’s a cross between confusion and disgust, Bruce laughs, taking a left turn and starting to pull up to the _Liberty Resort._

“Hey assholes,” Bruce calls, reaching back to wake Lawrence and Peake. “How would you like to sleep in a real bed?”

\--

Bruce takes the first shower he’s taken in _days_. It’s easily the most soothing thing he’s felt, watching all the dirt and blood swirl down the drain. He towels off, and finally looks at the clothes that James, Elyse and Lawrence had so proudly chosen for him from the shop downstairs. Bruce has to fight back the groan.

He doesn’t mind the jeans--Bruce used to wear shorts a lot more because of the LA weather but then after getting his new job he got used to slacks and _jeans_ \--and they fit perfectly well. He doesn’t really mind the undershirt-dress shirt combo, that works for him as well--it’s the brown jacket and matching cowboy hat that he’s displeased with.

Nonetheless, he puts everything on, save for the hat. _That_ he carries outside and stands by his bed in the suite, staring down at Elyse’s backpack sitting on hers, unattended. Bruce reaches into the backpack, unsure completely what he’s trifling for. He grabs a handful of the comics and pulls them out, flipping through casually. There are a few panels that earn a scoff from him, staring at his costume--the gaudy bright orange with accents of black making him look more like a tiger than a wolverine, _ugh_ \--but only one panel in particular makes him stop.

Bruce reaches into the backpack and takes out the blood-stained envelope of cash, noting the coordinates scrawled in pencil. He looks down at the comic, then at the numbers on the envelope again.

He walks out into the other bedroom in the suite where Lawrence lies on the bed with Peake sitting beside him, Elyse wheeling back and forth in her spot in the wheelchair, James hovering by the window. Soft music emanates from the TV where a classic Western movie plays, Elyse watching, captivated.

“These are bullshit,” Bruce announces, displaying the comic, but no one so much as spares him a second glance. “In the real world, people _die_ ,” he adds, but again, Elyse’s gaze doesn’t waver from the screen.

He waits a moment, then Bruce holds open the comic to the panel, and holds up the envelope. “See this? The place we’re supposed to take her? It’s not _real_. Someone’s been reading too many comic books.” He drops it on the bed without a second thought, but no one in the room scrambles to look at it.

Elyse, however, turns to stare up at him with doe-like eyes, blue speckled with brown, almost the same colour as the new denim jacket she was wearing. Bruce stares away.

“Lawrence,” snaps Bruce, “did you not hear me? The coordinates come from the comic book--this place doesn’t exist. It’s not real.”

“It’s real for Elyse,” Lawrence whispers, quietly. Even quieter this time, “it’s real for her.”

He thinks this a lot, the constant _what the fuck have I gotten myself into?_ thrumming in the background like a ringing in Bruce’s ears he never learned to get rid of; like a song constantly stuck in his head.

He’s like the only one with any form of sense or logic around here anymore. He’s the only one who can _stand_ for anything--but then who looks at Lawrence and remembers whose fault that was.

Remember when he was literally Lawrence’s student? Just his student too, too unruly and too unmotivated to be anything else.

Bruce tosses the pill bottle to Peake, says, “make _sure_ ,” and tells him to use to bolt-hatch lock when he leaves.

\--

“You pay me eight-thousand now, I can have it to you by the end of the day,” the woman says, hand resting on her hip. She gives Bruce an attractive smile.

Bruce returns it, despite the gesture feeling odd and unfamiliar on his face. “What if I gave you ten?”

“I’d give you the whole damn thing right now,” she says, almost a shocked laugh in her voice. “You’d still need tires, though.”

“How long would that take?”

“Uh--’bout an hour, I’d say.”

Bruce’s smile still sits on his face--he’s been told he used to smile a lot, that he should smile more. He thinks he misses it a bit. Not much, but a bit.

He turns to look at the used navy pickup car sitting in front of him.

“You know any good bars around here?”

\--

There are already armored trucks at the resort when Bruce returns.

Bruce takes a step forward and when it becomes the hardest thing he’s ever had to do, Bruce realizes _something is terribly terribly wrong._ The ear is ringing again in his ears which means--

\--Bruce is fighting every single thing in his body telling him to _stay put_ like he’s fighting the laws of physics by putting one foot in front of the other one foot in front of the other one step at a time _one step_ \--

\--the elevator seems like four years away and he’s knocking over frozen people who aren’t able to fight the waves of static in their heads trying to get there hands scrambling head turned down brain throbbing eyes straining he’s not breathing _inhale exhale inhale take a step_ **_take two steps_ ** _inhale exhale inhale exhale_ \--

\--this slow ascent makes his brain hurt more and the Wolverine isn’t sure how much longer he can do this and the doors open and Bruce fights inertia back with a snarl and he keeps walking and Lawrence _oh god Lawrence_ how long is this seizure been going on for already too long too long inhale exhale one step one step--

\--his claws only make their way out because he has no other choice because he can’t stand upright unless his claws dig into the drywall there’s a man standing in the doorway to their hotel Bruce’s head hurts and it’s not clear it’s not **_clear_ ** the man’s eyes turn to look at Bruce but his body doesn’t move--

\--a brief moment of clarity. Bruce unsheathes his claws from the wall, and he kills the man by uppercutting him and watching the claws enter from his chin and come out from the top of his skull. The man collapses and Bruce enters the room, head still ringing--

\--three men with their guns and Elyse on the ground with a needle in one hand grunting with effort and pain and James slowly _painfully_ killing a fourth man _inhale exhale inhale_ while Peake struggles to reach Lawrence sitting in his wheelchair while waves of mind static and emanating pain other hand outstretched towards the needle in Elyse’s--

\--Bruce kills _one_ _man_ while James moves on to another _two men_ and Bruce digs his claws in the third man’s eyes and Peake’s fingers touch Elyse’s and he grabs the needle--

\-- _inhale exhale_ **_clarity_**. Everyone collapses, as if letting out a sigh of overwhelming relief. Bruce looks at James and Peake, at Lawrence and Elyse, the sweat slicked down their foreheads and a look of resignation on their faces.

Bruce says, “we gotta go,” but everyone has already grabbed their bags and he starts to wheel Lawrence out.

\--

“Two days on the road,” Lawrence spits, “two days on the road with one proper meal--I’m fucking dying and Peake’s exhausted trying to keep me alive--”

“Take your pills,” is all Bruce says, watching Peake hold them out towards Lawrence in his rearview mirror. Lawrence maneuvers around his hand with all the grace of a circus seal. “How long, Lawrence?”

No answer. “How _long?”_ Bruce barks, making him flinch.

“Two days,” Lawrence mumbles under his breath, finally taking the pills from Peake’s hand. Bruce purposely drives full-speed into a pothole and makes Peake bump into Lawrence’s shoulder.

“You can’t do that, Lawrence. We can’t have that happen again--”

“Yeah, because you want me to become a damn buffoon,” Lawrence shoots back. “Babbling about numbers and code like a mindless fucking--”

“If that happens again, people could die.”

“--it worked out this time, didn’t it?”

“You got _lucky_ ,” debunks Bruce, glaring at him in the rearview mirror. Lawrence shrugs and puts the pills in his mouth, Elyse watching closely. “And I wanna see it!” Bruce adds, so Lawrence opens his empty mouth for him with a mocking _blegh_. James snorts, and Bruce lets out another long-suffering sigh.

"I'm disappointed in you," Lawrence mouths off. In response, Bruce just says, "thanks, dad," before they continue down the highway in silence.

\--

Somewhere down the long expanse of never-ending highway, Bruce feels his own soul exiting his body.

“Cut that out,” Bruce says, as Elyse clicks the lock on the car for the umpteenth time.

“Leave her alone,” James murmurs, head lolling against his seat.

Bruce glances away from the road at James, says, “and take your feet off the dash.”

James does so, shooting him a glare all the while. The car continues down the highway at a comfortable pace, when a flash in Bruce’s mirror makes him look up and before they know it, another car is twisting by them. Bruce slams on the brakes, swiveling off to the side of the road, everyone lurching forward in their seats.

“Fuck,” James spits, as Bruce asks, “everyone okay?”

Lawrence reaches out between James and Bruce’s heads, pointing at the car that had sped past them, sitting in a ditch, a man standing next to the car with a woman. “They could use some help,” he says.

Bruce thinks about it for a minute. Thinks about how old habits die hard, how they used to save lives, save _worlds._ Now they’re sitting in a shitty car while running from some assholes with way more people and guns than them. _Christ._

“Let someone else come along,” Bruce pans, reaching over to put the car back into ignition.

“Someone _has_ come along,” Lawrence responds, in that stubborn way only he was capable of. Bruce makes no move to get out, but James is already unbuckling his seatbelt and climbing out their car, so the other man has no choice but to follow.

“Hey,” James calls, all charm and none of the aggression Bruce is accustomed to. “Can we lend you a hand?”

\--

Bruce digs his feet into the dirt and heaves, aching arms pushing the truck out of the dirt, James grinning beside him. The car teeters and rocks, before the wheels spin and the vehicle drags itself out of the ditch.

James lets his hand fall on Bruce’s shoulder, grip lingering and digits grazing along his covered shoulder, giving him a smile he had _only_ reserved for Bruce.

The woman gets out of the car and Bruce makes the steps up the ditch towards her, squinting in the sunset.

“Thank you guys. I’m Olivia,” the woman says, stepping forward to give Bruce a firm handshake. “David, my husband,” she points to the man, “that’s Charlie.”

“Bruce.”

“That your boyfriend?”

He turns to see James talking to the other man with a happy expression on his face, turns back to smile at Olivia. “That’s my--” Bruce stutters, thinks and finally says, “fiancé, James. That’s his sister, Ellie. My brother Matt and his boyfriend Larry. We’re going on a roadtrip of sorts.”

“That’s sweet,” Olivia responds, “been trying to get these two to go on a roadtrip for years.”

“You should,” Bruce says, a little flatly, “great for getting to really know one another. You can think you know someone after 8 years, but you don’t really know ‘em until you’re trapped in a car with them for 78 hours straight.”

“Shut up--you love us!”

Bruce angles his hand behind him and away from the woman’s eyes to flip Lawrence off. Olivia ducks her head as she smiles, hands on her hips. “Can I offer you guys a home cooked meal in thanks? We don’t live too far from here.”

Bruce bristles, hesitating because he’s afraid his pleasure principle might get the better of him. Luckily, Lawrence’s answers for him, calling, “that would be lovely, thank you!”

Bruce smiles at Olivia, and in return, Olivia grins back.

\--

“Said you were my fiancé,” the Wolverine announces under his breath to Colossus in the car. “Elyse is your sister--Peake’s my brother. Lawrence is his boyfriend.”

James chuckles, asks, “Freudian slip?” and Bruce rolls his eyes.

“Just so we keep our stories right,” Bruce murmurs flatly, but James wraps two fingers around Bruce’s wrist, and he’s reminded of how right it feels.

\--

“So where are you bunch headed?”

“Charlotte,” James says, right as Bruce sputters, “New York.”

“We’re headed to New York,” Peake follows smoothly, “but we’re gonna stop over in Charlotte.” This seems to combat the confusion from David’s face, so Bruce lets his haunches down, takes another bite of his potatoes.

“I’ve been trying to get this bunch to go on a roadtrip but Charlie’s got school, and we’ve got the farm and all that--”

“Telling you, Ma, I’ll take a year off from school. _No problem._ ”

Bruce fights back the smile trying to make its way onto his face. Elyse takes an experimental nibble of her meatloaf, finds she likes it, and starts eating more. Bruce is just glad that at least she remembers how to use a fork and knife.

“No, Charlie,” Olivia shuts him down, passing the plate of corn to Lawrence.

“You know,” James says, between bites of his peas, “Lawrence’s dad used to run a school. Passed it onto him a while back. Big old thing.”

Lawrence smiles, as if he’d been waiting his whole life to say this. “It was a school for, special needs kids, I suppose you could say.”

Bruce lets out half a chuckle around the meatloaf in his mouth, says, “you could say that.”

“He was a student there too,” Lawrence adds, then, “all these boys were. Made a lot more trouble than they were worth! The property damages--”

“Yeah, yeah,” James waves him off, “you’re not even that much older than us. _Bruce_ looks older than you.”

“--I could say that you were a good student,” Lawrence follows without hesitation, “but the words would choke me.”

Olivia and Charlie let out good-natured laughs, James grinning and Lawrence too, and Peake smiles--which is essentially the equivalent of a full-fledged grin. Elyse is smiling too, and Bruce feels himself relax for the first time he has in a long, long time.

Bruce won’t admit it, but he finally thinks he remembers how it feels to be home.

\--

“Well, thank you very much for the meal,” Bruce says, standing by the table, “but I think it’s time we get going.”

“Nonsense,” Olivia says, taking his plate with a wave of her hand. “It’s late. You should stay the night--you don’t want to be driving tired. We’ve got two guest rooms. One for you and James, and the other for your brother and Lawrence. We’ve got a couch that pulls out for your sister-in-law.”

Bruce hesitates, but Peake--bless his soul--seems to notice, so he steps in. “That sounds wonderful, thank you.”

“Water’s shut off,” David says after dinner, and Bruce isn’t quite sure why it’s enough to warrant Olivia to smack her hand on the table.

“Some big company,” Olivia provides by way of explanation. “Bought all the land around us and want to make us leave. We refused, so they keep messing with us.”

David picks up his bag, says, “It’s a two-mile walk. I can make it out there but it’s hard to do by myself.”

Charlie shouts, “I’ll come, dad!” but Olivia shuts him down with a, “nuh uh, it’s a school night. You gotta do your homework.”

James turns to David and puts his hands in front of him in a show of good nature. “Bruce can go with you. I’ve gotta work on the car. We’re having some issues.”

“Toolkit’s in the back of the shed, Ollie’ll show you where it is.”

Bruce thinks for a moment, watches James give him a tiny shrug as he walks past. James even stoops to give Bruce a quick peck on his temple before he grabs his coat and walks out the backdoor with Olivia. _He’s really selling this lie, isn’t he?_

“Gimme a minute,” Bruce says, “I gotta get Matt and Larr settled in first.”

David gives him an understanding nod as Bruce slides out of his spot at the table, giving Elyse a quick push to keep her in her seat. Peake follows him closely as they wheel Lawrence to the bottom of the steps, where Bruce picks him up--bridal style--and carries him up the steps.

Peake pulls up a chair next to Lawrence once Bruce lays him down on the bed, pulling the covers up around him. Bruce sighs, and turns to leave.

“Look around, Bruce,” he says, enough to make Bruce stop in his steps. “This is what family is like: people love each other. Take a moment to take it all in.”

Bruce doesn’t move, not even to shift his weight. He stands there for a long moment, stares off at the spot on the floor.

“You still have time, Bruce.”

When Bruce turns to look at Lawrence, he’s giving him a faint smile. Bruce looks away, flicks the light off and bids him goodnight as he leaves the room.

\--

“Your brother doesn’t like talking much, does he?”

Bruce shakes his head, shrugs off his dress shirt, taking up one of the wrenches from David.

“My brother was the same way,” David says, “my mom always said it was ‘cause I talked so damn much.”

Bruce smiles. David steps up to the leaking pipe and starts screwing one of the bolts down, and Bruce does the same. “And… uh, Ellie? How long has she been like that?” When Bruce doesn’t respond, David adds, “mute.”

That’s a good question. Bruce hesitates for a long minute, avoiding David’s gaze. “Since… always,” Bruce answers, and it’s not exactly a _lie,_ Elyse has been silent from the day Bruce met her. God knows if she’s mute or not.

“Wish my family was like that, sometimes,” jokes David, and Bruce smiles again, finally looking up at him. “Can’t get them to shut the fuck up.”

Bruce doesn’t answer, just moves on to the next bolt. They work in silence after that.

\--

Bruce hovers by the car that’s suspiciously lacking a James leaning over it, and tells David, “I’ll be right in. I just gotta check something.”

David nods again, meanders off into the house. Bruce squints into the darkness, glancing around for any sign of James. He takes a few steps towards the corn they have planted in the garden, closing his eyes, inhaling the scent of dirt.

( _Adam grew up on a farm._ )

He shakes the thought out of his head, just staring out into the rows of corn again, alone. Silence. Only the wind whistling past the leaves and rustling the stalks around him. He turns to look at the combine harvester sitting a few feet away from the car, wondering if James had ripped any spare parts from the poor machine.

Gunshot. Bruce thinks he hears someone screaming-- _Elyse?_ \--and he jogs towards the house, pushing the door open and having a figure greet him at the bottom of the stairs, stomach suddenly filled with something slippery and cold. David lies between him and the stairway, body still and unmoving.

The figure at the bottom of the stairs is Bruce. But not… Bruce. Because Bruce is standing here, in the living room, Bruce is not--Bruce is not--

He looks like Bruce, and he has his own metal claws dripping with blood and he carries a shackled and screaming Elyse in tow. Bruce is paralysed, stock still with shock and when Not Bruce passes he looks Bruce in the eye--

\--and Bruce stares back into an empty reflection of himself. There’s something feral about those eyes that grips him by the shoulders and shakes.

Elyse screams louder, throat sounding torn and ripped apart, screams as she drags her feet along the floor to no avail, screams at Bruce as she passes.

Bruce looks up the stairs and his heart sinks into his stomach, something slippery coating the walls of his inside. “Lawrence,” he tries to yell, but his voice cracks around the words. He thinks he already knows, somewhere deep in his stomach that this is it, this is _it_ but he keeps desperately trying to shove that feeling back. “Lawrence!” _God no please no,_ his blood pumping in his ears as he stumbles up the steps.

The hallway is sticky with blood. Bruce takes a step over the mangled bodies Olivia and Charlie--they hadn’t known, how could they, _they wouldn’t have helped them otherwise_ \--and nearly falls into the bedroom.

“Lawrence--”

Peake is on the ground, lying in a pool of blood with a hand stretched up towards the bed. His fingers barely stroking at Lawrence’s, forehead completely slick with red. “Bruce,” Peake stumbles to say, and immediately the aforementioned crosses the room to the bed.

“It wasn’t me,” is all the Wolverine can mutter softly, hands reaching under Lawrence to carry him, “it wasn’t me, I’m sorry Lawrence, I’m sorry.”

Peake says, “I know,” and then, “get to the car. I’ll be okay.” As if he was expecting Bruce to wait for him (he knew he wouldn’t).

“I’m sorry, Lawrence,” he says again, and wipes the red from Lawrence’s chin, as if he’d done it a hundred times (he had). “I’m sorry.”

\--

The trip downstairs to the truck seems to last a million years and Bruce isn’t sure if Lawrence is still bleeding and if Peake had managed to heal Lawrence at all.

Lawrence can’t die. Lawrence _can’t die._  Lawrence can’t die thinking it was Bruce who did this to him, Lawrence can’t die, Lawrence needs to live, Lawrence needs to _survive_.

Maybe he doesn’t remember, but Lawrence had saved Bruce, once. The way him and Adam had found Bruce with nothing but the clothes on his back and the dogtags around his neck--(“When we found you, you were pursuing an early death in cage fighting,” Lawrence would spit, “we _made_ something out of you.) Lawrence had saved Bruce but he couldn’t save Adam--and Bruce doesn’t think he can save Lawrence.

Except Adam had been lost to his own mind, not because--

Lawrence murmurs something. Faint, and it jolts Bruce’s heart into action, making him lean closer to where he loaded Lawrence in the truck.

“Our boat…” he whispers, and something in Bruce’s heart defuses, breaking and crumbling into a million pieces. “The… Sunseeker.”

\--

From a distance, Bruce hears James yell. He promises, “I’ll be back,” to Lawrence, shuts the door to the truck, and sprints away.

By the time he gets there, James is crumpled on the ground, chest heaving and hands thick with blood. James must have been surprised, that’s the only reason who wouldn’t have been able to power up--

Bruce crouches over James in time to be kicked in his left ribs hard enough to throw him onto his side.

Struggling to get to his feet, Bruce’s shoes slip against the wet grass as Elyse’s bloodcurdling screams harmonize with the pumping of the blood in his ears.

Not Bruce lands another kick on Bruce’s torso, knocking him back several steps. Not Bruce steps over the latter’s body and raises his fists before bringing them down and Bruce can barely raise his own claws in time to hold them back--a clash of blood metal upon metal--

Not Bruce is almost stronger and faster than Bruce but Bruce has more experience. Bruce has acid pumping through his veins and he punches a clean hole through Not Bruce’s neck, before it completely heals.

Bruce and Not Bruce fight and clash with adamantium slicing against more adamantium claws--metal clanging and ringing out sharp and loud. This version of Bruce, this _clone_ , is younger and more animalistic, feral than Bruce is, but Bruce has _experience_.

Not Bruce swings his hand forward and slashes through Bruce’s torso, getting deep into his torso. Bruce thinks that had he been a little slower, his stomach would be spilled all over the grass; entrails slicking the blades. He sits up from where he had fallen back from the force of the impact in time to hear a familiar voice yell, “ _X-24!_ ”

Bruce swivels his head. The image he’s greeted with is instantly burned into his mind: a man standing in the headlights of his truck, wearing a white labcoat. Bruce can’t see his face. It scares him more.

X-24 takes half a step forward before Bruce aimlessly swings his claws at the other’s legs, knocking him down only to watch the flesh seal up again. He scrambles to his feet, leaping and bringing his fists down, _down_ into the other’s chest--

\--but the mirror catches Bruce’s wrist and snaps him over, slamming Bruce onto his side with enough force for Bruce to feel not one, but two, ribs bend. He drags his claws down the length of Not Bruce’s arm as he stands over Bruce, hovering above him like Bruce’s death, as he steps on the injury in Bruce’s torso.

( _\--lying on your back with your heart in your hand--_ )

Stronger, metallic hands drive the feral version of Wolverine onto a combine harvester. Bruce gasps for air, eyes locked on the assailant.

There’s still an unspoken vulnerability to James’ metal form; something soft and wielding and malleable. The blood slicked sticky and red across the silver reflecting the dim light coming from the house, and James clenches his fist before punching the impaled clone _hard_.

Hit after hit. X-24 stops resisting and James still punches him, before digging a finger into one of his eyeballs and ripping it from within his skull.

Unable to find other words, Bruce calls, “James?”

James turns, slipping out of his metal form. The wound on his torso seems more apparent than others, and James suddenly looks very unstable; weak almost. Face paling, before his knees give out and he collapses to the ground.

Bruce’s heart almost implodes--he can’t lose James, not now, not when he needs him most. Bruce gathers his energy to reach James in time for his best friend to grab him by the hand and whisper, “ _don’t let them take her_.”

He’s fucking with Bruce, he’s just fucking with him--not again, please not again--

( _when had this happened before?_ )

\--James can’t die, Colossus can’t die, James _can’t die._

“Don’t,” Bruce whispers, but it comes out sounding like a plead to stay here with him. “Willems, don’t do this.”

He doesn’t want to admit this, but he thinks James is going to leave anyway. He thinks James is leaving because Bruce feels like he can no longer make James happy; because James has found something better that he likes more.

It’s like he’s watched James die before, like James has watched him better. There’s a version of this where neither of them die, and there’s a version of this where both of them do. Bruce thinks his favourite might be the one where neither of them have to go--they just play video games and make jokes and Bruce kisses James every night. _God, he’s made a mess, hasn’t he?_

“It’s not over for you, Bruce,” James says, with the last of his strength. “Not yet.”

There isn’t even enough time for him to say a proper goodbye.

\--

Bruce stands up, and carries Elyse to the car.

The man in the headlights watches them leave but he doesn’t stop them. Doesn’t try to stop them.

Elyse keeps screaming, mournful and loud, when she realizes Bruce left James on the ground, eyes closed and hand outstretched.

Bruce is glad Elyse is screaming; it’s more than enough for the both of them.

\--

Peake dies somewhere on the stretch of highway to South Dakota. His hand still on Lawrence’s, trying to keep him sustained, using the last of his life force to keep the other man alive.

Lawrence dies within a hundred miles to the next town.

Bruce realizes later that day that neither of them knew the other had gone and somehow manages to keep from breaking down entirely.

\--

Bruce buries them both that afternoon, laying them to rest side by side. There’s a lake nearby, there’s trees--

A lake nearby. Trees, hanging over the water and casting long shadows. An occasional breeze. He tries to think of something he’d say, something to tell them--but…

Bruce is so close to breaking down right there, hand gripping around the shovel, that he almost doesn’t notice Elyse’s hand on his wrist. He wrenches his own hand away and makes it back to the car.

( _He really_ **_was_ ** _alone now, wasn’t he?)_

The car stutters. He pushes harder this time, pressing down on the gas to no avail. “ _Goddammit_ ,” Bruce curses, stepping out of the car and back into the sun. “Motherfucking--”

Bruce picks up the shovel and slams it against the trunk, the door, then the rearview mirror, cursing it out all the while.

  
The lake. Trees. The sun in his eyes, on his back, beaming into his face. He can almost _smell_ the ocean. Something warm climbs up the back of his throat. Bruce’s knees give out from beneath him and he finds himself staring at the sky for a brief moment of blue until nothing. Blackness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> while this was being written, the filmhaus podcast on logan came out and james jokingly refers to bruce as hugh jackman. i called it. 
> 
> thanks for reading! hope you enjoyed <3


	3. ACT III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the final chapter. again, please refrain from reading to avoid MAJOR spoiler content for logan. thanks! <3

He drifts in and out of consciousness.

\--

Lights, hovering in front of him. Blurry, bright. Is this dying? Is this what it feels like?

It hurts. It hurts less than he thought it would, but it hurts. On his back--heart in his hand--

Someone’s breaths, beside him. _Lawrence?_ Bruce blinks, trying to fight the weariness out of his eyes. Whatever he’s lying on is hard and uncomfortable, and for a moment, Bruce thinks he might be back on that table, foreign metal and acid pumping through his body again--

“Oh, you’re awake,” a soft voice; a man’s voice. _James?_ No, too soft--Bruce catches himself almost thinking: _Adam_ , but it couldn’t be. It wouldn’t. He blinks again, slowly waking up.

“I’m glad,” the voice says again, and Bruce catches sight of a man with greying hair in a doctor’s uniform--long white coat and stethoscope around his neck. “I was beginning to think that I would have to tell that nice girl in the waiting room her boyfriend was gone.”

No response. Bruce is suddenly acutely aware of every ache in his body, every sore spot. He wants nothing more than to just lay here forever, but he remembers. Lawrence. James, Peake. The barn. Dinner. Skitismas. _Elyse._ In the waiting room.

“I’ve always wanted to see one of you in person,” the doctor continues, “the _FH_ crew. But something’s happening to you, isn’t it? Something’s making you sick.” _That’s_ something Bruce has heard a lot of in these past few days.

He tries to sit up, hands grasping at the paper under him on the table he was lying on. “Oh no no--” the man tries, but Bruce doesn’t stop moving. He feels a tug at his chest; looks down to see bandages and several patches, stitches on his torso, three claw marks across his stomach. Bruce yanks his IV drip out without a second thought, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

The doctor tries to stop Bruce as he buttons up his shirt, making his way out the door as fast as he can without completely tearing out all his stitches. “You need help,” the doctor keeps calling after him in vain, trying to follow, “you need to check into a hospital.”

“I appreciate the hospitality, doc, but the best thing you can do is forget we were ever here,” Bruce responds, opening the door and stepping out into the waiting room. Elyse looks up from her magazine, still wearing her sunglasses, and puts it down as she follows after him.

Without a word, Elyse leads him to a beat up blue pickup truck across the street, one that he’s never seen before--fishing equipment sitting in the back. Bruce sighs under his breath.

“You can’t just steal shit, Elyse.”

She opens the door to the passenger’s side of the pickup, sitting motionless as Bruce reluctantly gets in. She keeps her gaze pinned to something on the horizon, Bruce furrows his brows and steels himself.

_What the fuck has he gotten himself into?_

“Look,” Bruce pushes against the silence, aware that without Lawrence and James and Peake, everything is about ten times quieter; the air heavier. “I don’t know how you managed to get me here… but, I probably would’ve been dead without you. So… thanks.”

“De rien,” Elyse says.

Bruce freezes. He turns to face her, glaring. “You _talk_?”

A nod.

“You can **talk**?”

Elyse nods again. Bruce leans forward, hands gripping the steering wheel in sheer rage. “So what was all that--what was all that fucking-- bullshit for the last two thousand fucking miles?”

Elyse opens her mouth and a stream of pure French comes flowing out, fast and unstopping and loud.

“What?” Bruce sits back in his seat as she keeps yelling something unknown at him. She doesn’t stop, just keeps screaming words in French. “Okay, okay, shut up--” Bruce shouts back in an attempt to shut her up (it doesn’t work), “shut up--shut the _fuck up!_ ”

Elyse reaches around and starts to dig through her bag, pulling out a map of the states. Bruce dimly registers black marks along the map before she holds it out in front of him, pointing and chatting quickly about something.

From her bag, Elyse produces a familiar blood-stained envelope. “North Dakota. S’il vous plaît.”

Bruce ignores her, reaches over for the envelope. She pulls back before he can grab it, repeating herself with an air of finality. “ _North Dakota. S’il vous plaît._ ”

Elyse digs through her bag, pulling out a map of the states. Bruce dimly registers black marks along the map before she holds it out in front of him, pointing and chatting quickly about something.

“I see it, I know I know--” he waves her off, frustration growing in his chest and seeping through his bones. “I’m not taking you--it’s not real, y’hear me? Your friend, Joel--he read too many fucking stories, okay? It’s made up, it’s not--”

Elyse punches him in the face. Bruce swipes at her wrist when she pulls back. “Don’t fucking hit me!” he yells, in between her drawn-out cry of _allons-y!_ right at his face.

“I can’t--I’m not taking you to fucking North Dakota!” He announces at last, making Elyse shut up and sit down. “I’m _not_. This is not what I signed up for.”

Elyse doesn’t answer, just keeps staring at him with those damned doe eyes.

“This is the farthest I’m going to go. I’m not taking you to North Dakota--it’s a two day drive, and I am fucked up. I can’t _do that._ ” But he doesn’t cite _why_ , and maybe that isn’t enough for Elyse, because she sits back and says a series of things that don’t make any sense:

“Ian. Ben. Don. Michael. Kyle.”

Bruce frowns. “What the fuck are you--”

“Ian. Ben. Don. Michael. _Kyle_ ,” she echoes, and the Wolverine narrows his eyes, as Elyse continues, “Ian, Ben, Don, Michael, Kyle--”

“--Stop that.”

“Ian, Ben, Don, Michael, Kyle,” faster this time, Bruce swatting at her in an honest attempt to get her to stop. It doesn’t work, Elyse just reaches into her bag and pulls out an aged photograph; Elyse standing in the middle, between a group of men. She points to each of them as she continues on her loop. “Ian, Ben, Don, Michael, Kyle, _Ian, Ben, Don, Michael, Kyle_ \--”

“--Okay, okay!” Bruce responds, finally, turning the keys in the car. “ _Fuck._ I’ll drive you to goddamm North Dakota and then you’ll see--fucking North Dakota-- **nothing** fucking _there--_ ”

The car stutters, and then starts with a small jolt. Bruce thinks: _What the fuck did I get myself into?_ It’s not the first time, and he’s sure it’s not going to be the last.

\--

Elyse murmurs something. Even if Bruce had been paying enough attention to catch it, he’s pretty sure it was in French. He ignores her then, eyelids drooping and he feels--

\--a sudden jolt as Elyse reaches over for the steering wheel. Bruce jumps awake, heart pumping faster than the truck itself, and corrects the swaying truck.

“Let me drive,” she pushes.

“ _Absolutely not_ ,” he responds.

Elyse sits back. Bruce does his best not to look away from the road.

She mutters something under her breath, again, in French.

Bruce says, “no comprendre,” because he’s an asshole.

“You’re dying,” Elyse answers, without missing a beat. “You want to die. Something is making you sick. Something inside you. Lawrence and Peake told me.”

Bruce keeps his mouth shut. Mostly out of exhaustion, but he’s waiting for Elyse to explain, perhaps to start to make any semblance of sense. When nothing seems forthcoming, then-- “Did they tell you anything else?”

“Do not let you.” Elyse has the wind whipping around her face now, blonde hair catching against her nose; her lips. “You need to rest.”

As if on cue, Bruce’s eyelids start to feel heavy and droop again. He’s almost completely asleep when the truck swerves again, Elyse’s hands shooting out to catch the steering wheel and Bruce jumps awake, swiftly pulling into a stop in a ditch.

For a long moment, Bruce just sits there and thinks. His whole body hurts and he wants nothing more than to fucking go home; for Lawrence and Peake and James to just suddenly walk out and say _sike we’re still alive_ \--but he knows that’s not going to happen.

Bruce slumps in his seat, eyes in the shade. He stretches out his achy legs and shuts his eyes.

\--

Bruce wakes up with a crick in his neck and sun reflecting off the dashboard into his eyes. He sits up, cracks open the door and feels the dry desert air on his skin, in his lungs, warranting a cough.

Bruce stumbles out the empty truck, blood slicked down on one eyebrow and squinting at the area around him. This is not the ditch where he had stopped. Cliff faces. Stacked high, extremely high. Like ones Bruce had seen before. Like the ones in the comics.

“Bruce!” He hears Elyse yell from her spot halfway up the cliff, waving at him. She’s staring at him; Bruce brings his hand up to shield the sun from his eyes.

Elyse shouts something in French, making a gesturing motion towards her.

Bruce feels dizzy; sick and tired and with vomit climbing up his throat. His neck still hurts and his legs are sore and his last thoughts is that he’s about to pass out--and then his eyes roll back in his head and he crumples to the ground.

\--

This time, Bruce wakes up with the worst fucking headache in the _world_ and a shitton of dust up his nose and in his beard. When he manages to sit up, he notices Elyse wandering the area in front of him, no longer on the cliff face. She's looking for something. She looks lost.

“Elyse,” he calls. “ _Elyse_.”

She doesn’t answer. At least, not immediately. The only thing she says is, “It’s supposed to be here.”

Bruce knows. Bruce knows it’s not there and that he had told her it wasn’t going to be, Bruce knows it isn’t real and it never was--

“Look at me,” says Bruce. “Look at me, Elyse!”

She spins on her spot, five feet in front of him. Those familiar doe-like eyes, wide and desperate. Elyse struggles to answer, still keeping her mouth clamped in frustration.

“It’s not fucking here, okay? There’s _nothing_ here. There is no place, there’s _no one here_ \--” Bruce swings an arm at the vast desert around them. “There’s nothing fucking here! The safe place isn’t _real_ , okay? It’s not a _real place_. It was made up, it’s a fucking story--”

Elyse opens her mouth and screams. Long and hard, long enough to rip her vocal chords apart. Eyes half shut from the force of her scream. She keeps yelling at Bruce and doesn’t let him edge a single word in.

When Bruce shuts up, Elyse tears her bag off her back and slams it on the ground, claws pushing out between her knuckles. Elyse slashes at the nearby trees, screaming all the while. She cuts down an entire cactus and keeps screaming, birds taking to the sky in an attempt to avoid her wrath.

Bruce lies down on the desert ground, attempting to lessen the potential injuries if he collapses. Feels as if he might pass out again.

In the horizon, the sun starts to slip beneath the ground. He feels as if he might throw up; mouth tasting stale and like vomit, as if the little food he’d had is threatening to make its way back up his throat.

Elyse stops screaming. Bruce closes his eyes.

\--

Bruce jolts awake, gasping for air and clawing at someone who isn’t actually there.

There’s a jacket thrown around his torso, just up to his neck. He’s not lying in the same place he had earlier, instead now his head is resting against a dead log, face in the shade. He hears the occasional crack and spark of a fire, and if he closes his eyes, he can almost pretend he’s back at the barn.

But.

The inevitable truth that he’s not, that James and Peake and Lawrence are not: a blonde sitting two feet away from the fire, knees pulled up to her chest. _The_ woman who had thrown Bruce’s already tumultuous life off course even more.

There’s no ocean. No boat. Not near here, not in this lifetime. Not in Lawrence’s lifetime. Maybe not in Bruce’s.

“You were having a nightmare,” Elyse says quietly, words soft enough to be lost in the night.

Bruce collapses back against the desert floor. Asks, “do you?”

“Yes,” and Bruce has almost never seen her this small, this vulnerable. The fire next to them cracks and the light flickers, orange dancing through blonde strands. She sits in that silence for a while before saying, “people hurt me.”

Something in Bruce hears this and it makes him want to drop kick the goddamn Earth into the sun--more than usual--knowing that anybody on this planet could hurt Elyse. Yet he’d seen it.

“Mine are different,” is what Bruce says, instead of everything he wants to say.

“How?”

“I hurt people.”

This wide-eyed innocence is what tells Bruce that Elyse genuinely hadn’t been meaning to pry when she asks, was just what she always is: curious.

Bruce puts a hand on his eyes, watches the light of the flames dance along his skin. He shuts his eyes and sees James, sees Peake, sees Lawrence.

And then he sees Adam. Adam, crouching over Lawrence’s body. Adam, being able to move a whole submarine from the water; Adam, telling Bruce he was no longer alone.

No longer alone.

Bruce sees James dying back at the house, and sees himself burying Peake, sees Lawrence slowly wasting away by himself in that tank, all that time, and Bruce didn’t even have half a fucking mind to tell him he still loved him.

 _Adam_. Promising Bruce that he had a choice. Staring at Bruce like he wasn’t what he’d been made; was more than the metal skeleton inside of him.

Adam, and the lack of recognition on his face when he met Bruce’s eye again, a year ago.

_What hurts more, Bruce, knowing he erased you from his memory so he could hurt you better, or because you held him back so much?_

(“You failed me,” Adam hissed, grip tight on the metal skeleton in between Bruce’s flesh, “I saved you, only for them to fuck you up more than any of those humans ever did.”)

Lawrence, James and Peake never bring him up intentionally. None of them blame Bruce either; they had made that crystal clear the day after Adam had decided he didn’t want to follow the same morals as they did. That same day that Adam walked away, left Lawrence bleeding out on a beach. Bruce provides enough of his own guilt to last a lifetime.

He doesn’t believe in a sign of good gesture; good _faith,_ but the day Bruce realized Adam had forgotten about him intentionally, Adam had clenched a fist and raised a submarine from the ocean--everyone left alive, but it felt more like a warning. A _message,_  an empty reassurance. Bruce thinks this is Adam’s version of an apology, his own version of penance, but he doesn’t want to play the game of _what happens when Kovic decides he no longer wants to make amends?_

Lawrence can’t read Adam’s mind anymore. Bruce stops exercising in futility and stops asking all together. Deliberately promising himself that despite everything--despite the nights sleeping alone in his car, the grieving over the memories and James doing a terrible job at pretending he was coping--that he would _never_ speak to Adam about this; rebuke him for it like it was his fault that everyone was displaced and drained and disjointed.

(Bruce has never told anyone this: The last thing Adam said to him before he forgot was that he knew how he was going to die. On his back, with his heart in his hands. This is a recurring thought Bruce has--a demon that chases him through his worst nightmares.

He’s going to die on his back with his heart in his hands.

There are worse ways to go.)

“I hurt people too,” Elyse tells him at last, maybe trying to make him feel better. “Bad people.”

“All the same,” responds Bruce, a little sadly. He hurts people trying to hurt him as much as he does the people he cares about. He doesn’t say it, but the name _Adam_ thrums along his skin, dancing in the fire in a way that only he can see.

Bruce lost James and he buried Peake and Lawrence, but then he realizes that he buried Adam too at one point, and that he was just too stupid to realize.

Bruce doesn’t look away from his hand, from the fire. “You need to leave, Elyse. I don’t know where but you can’t stay here.”

“We were supposed to cross the border into Canada,” Elyse tells him after a long silence.

Bruce doesn’t have to fight the urge to shrug. Which is new.

“What is this?” There it is, Elyse’s voice soft and small and true again. Tired, like Bruce.

He doesn’t answer.

She holds out her hand, something silver glinting in the firelight. Something in her eyes enough to make Bruce feel like a butcher handing the knife to a sheep.

Bruce gently takes the adamantium bullet from her hand. “You know what it is,” he tells her, because she does. “It’s made out of adamantium. It’s what they put inside of us--why they can kill us. Probably what’s killing me now.”

Elyse tilts her head, still silent, waiting. “A long time ago, I used to keep it as a reminder of what I am. Now I keep it to… uh. I thought…” and he pauses, here. Elyse is an adult. Elyse deserves to know the truth. “Actually, I...” he says, after a moment, “I was thinking of shooting myself with it. Like Lawrence said.”

“Why?”

“Tired,” he says, instead of all the things he actually should’ve said, all the things he thought of saying. Bruce stares at the bullet and swallows the lump in his throat.

He tucks it back in the pocket of his dress shirt as he leans back against the log.

Bruce’s chest doesn’t quite stop aching, but even from here he can see Elyse’s hands have stopped shaking, and perhaps that’s enough for now.

\--

“You’ve been out for a day,” she tells him when he wakes, the expression on her face unchanging.

Bruce snaps out of it, jerking upright. “You need to move. You can’t--”

“I _know_ ,” Elyse snaps. “But you were dying. You still are. You needed to rest.”

“The fuck are you waitin’ on me for?” Bruce snarks, brows furrowing.

Elyse pauses. Tilts her head minutely.

Bruce continues. “They’re coming for _you_ , Elyse. If you don’t get back over to Canada--”

She interrupts him with a flat, “I’m leaving first thing in the morning. Is that good enough?”

Bruce almost flinches.

“Hey,” he says, hand reaching out to grab at her sleeve before she recoils at his touch. “What’s the matter with you?” Bruce barks, and it comes out as a lot meaner than intended, though he doesn’t wince.

“Where will you go?”

Bruce pauses. Heaves a heavy breath through his nostrils. “Nearest bar, for starters.”

Elyse doesn’t respond then, just walks right by. Bruce takes her sleeve in his grip, which she immediately pulls out of.

“I’ve only known you for like, a week, okay? I held up my end of the bargain, alright? I got you here.”

“Such a nice man,” she snarks back. Elyse starts to wrestle through her bag, immediately producing a blood-smeared envelope. “Here,” and she throws it at his feet, kicking up dust from the ground. “It’s why you did this, isn’t it? Take it. _It’s yours_.”

Bruce picks up the wad of money. Pauses, and holds it back out to her. Repeats himself. “The hell’s the matter with you, Elyse?”

She doesn’t respond. Doesn’t even reach over to take the money.

He puts the money by her feet, thinks for a minute. “I didn’t sign up to go with you to Canada, okay?” It’s true. He didn’t even sign up for getting her this far. “I’m not…” Bruce huffs out a sigh. “I’m not whatever the fuck it is that you think I am. Now, I’ve brought you this far, but you gotta get there without me. You can manage that, I know you can.”

Elyse ignores him. Keeps staring off into the night. Bruce drops her jacket off by her feet too, still standing in front of her.

“Bad shit happens to people I care about,” he adds, “they get hurt. Because of me.”

“Then I’ll be _fine_ ,” Elyse manages to hiss, and it stings, like an invisible slap.

Bruce, without a response, sits back down across the fire from her. She still doesn’t look at him. That’s okay, Bruce thinks he might be sick if he has to look at her too.

They sit in that silence for a little bit longer. Bruce thinks, _what have I done?_ but doesn’t say anything. Elyse falls asleep before Bruce does and he feels an apology half-forming in his brain--

\--but he doesn’t want to wake her up.

Maybe it’s easier that way.

\--

Elyse is already gone when Bruce wakes up.

Bruce feels a little emptier, but he thinks he’ll get over it.

\--

He walks back to the car, still rusting and overheating in blazing desert sun. Bruce climbs back into the vehicle, puts his head back against the headrest.

The air smells like the farm. Soil and vegetation. _Adam._ He’s been trying to forget Adam--which was easier for the latter--but it’s not like he’s a death Bruce has sitting on his chest.

(For a minute, Bruce wonders if Adam knows that Lawrence is dead. It was what he wished, wasn’t it?

Adam Kovic, what feels like a lifetime ago. Splaying two palms towards the sky and ripping the Golden Gate Bridge from its supports. _Lawrence always wanted to build bridges._ )

Something in the distance rumbles. Bruce sits upright, narrowing his eyes at the horizon--

\--three armored trucks, disappearing down the line where the desert bleeds into the forest. Glinting black in the sunlight. _Skitismas._

 _Shit_ , Bruce panics, trying to start the car. It stutters, but gives up on him, and without wasting another second, the Wolverine stumbles out of the truck and sprints after them.

\--

He’s not met with any armed men for the first couple minutes he’s in the woods, and it’s the first time that it’s been a bad omen for him, the first time he wishes he’d seen someone.

His feet start to give out and he collapses by a tree trunk. He can’t do this he can’t do this he can’t--

\--a familiar scream of anger in the distance. Gunshots, birds fleeing the area. Bruce forces himself back on his feet and keeps running.

\--

Bruce loses count of how many men he kills, can only think of one thing, can only wonder if he’s gotten any closer, if Elyse is still _alive._

Hand holding a walkie-talkie to his face, Bruce sheathes the claws. Snarls, “I’m coming for you, Skitismas, you son of a bitch. If you hurt that girl I’ll make you _wish_ that you were dead,” before throwing it back into the dirt.

He picks a gun off one of the bodies and tucks it into his waistline, handle digging into his back like a lover’s hand. Trying to formulate a plan, trying to clear his head, trying to breathe.

The men had shot at him to the point where he can no longer feel the healing kick in at this point, but he’s almost there, he can almost…

He stops, behind a tree trunk in front of an open field where the trucks are sitting. Bruce stares out and finds what he’s looking for, shrugging his dress shirt off, and steels himself, gathering what little strength he has before he steps into the sunlight.

\--

Bruce can only just keep himself upright as he makes his way to the meadow; to where Skitismas is standing next to a familiar man in white, to where Elyse is on her knees with a gun to her head.

It’s a peaceful day. The birds are chirping. There’s shade, an occasional breeze. A lake, nearby. They would’ve liked it. He keeps himself a good ten feet away from them, still huffing.

Skitismas, who most likely sees himself as nothing less than a gentleman, drawls, “Bruce. This is Dr Burns. He made the mutant serum, if you recall--” Fragments. A bridge. _Lawrence always wanted to build bridges._ Mutants lining up for a chance to be normal. Better. Bruce had wanted that too, Bruce wanted to be anyone but him so bad that it hurt. “--and Dr Burns, I believe you’re familiar with Bruce’s work as the Wolverine.”

“Big fan,” the man in white says, and Bruce thinks of the night at the house, a man in front of the headlights. He stares menacingly at the former’s outstretched hand.

“Fuck him up, Bruce!” Elyse yells, and Skitismas drives the barrel of his gun deeper into her forehead, one arm still keeping her restrained.

“You’re dying,” Dr Burns tells him flatly, as if Bruce wasn’t already aware his life was literally fading before him-- “the adamantium is poisoning you. it’s likely you won’t survive any further injuries sustained.”

He’s barely standing now, doc, thanks for being so fucking observant. Bruce is trying his best not to completely just _lose it_ right now--he’s still trying to catch his third wind.

“You know,” Burns continues, as Bruce keeps inhaling sharply, huffing in as much air as he can before he collapses. “My father worked on the Weapon X program.”

“Yeah,” Bruce responds, “I think I might’ve killed him.”

Burns shrugs. Bruce makes eye contact with the struggling Elyse in Skitismas’ arms, trying to convey what he wants her to do.

Birds chirping in the background, Bruce narrows his eyes, and says, “he was the motherfucker that put this _shit_ in me.”

“We made you _better_ ,” Burns barks.

“--I would gladly kill him a thousand times over. It was meditative.”

“Watch your mouth, **_mutie_** _!”_ Skitismas digs the gun further into Elyse’s head, even kicks her in the side where a spot of red blossoms from her shirt. She winces in pain, Bruce fighting the urge to sprint forward and tear Skitismas’ goddamn leg from his body. “You’re freaks, you know that? Just vermin crawling around. He did you a fucking favor. Made the serum that cleansed the Earth.”

Burns takes a step towards Bruce, but the latter doesn’t make a move. “The plan wasn’t to completely get rid of the mutants. Just to make them work for us.” One step. Another. “We can help you, Bruce. You don’t have to die. I’ve always--”

Bruce lifts the gun and fires a bullet into Burns’ head. He drops the gun, the dress shirt he had been holding in his hands. Skitismas leaps back, Elyse leaping off of the ground and swinging silver claws at his leg before scrambling off. Bruce runs at Skitismas, who limps off towards the truck, veering around the back.

“Showtime, baby boy!” Skitismas yells, opening the door to the back of the vehicle, leading to Bruce being thrown backwards; assailant hovering over him, 250 pounds of sheer rippling muscle. Bruce unsheathes his claws, that familiar _snikt!_ echoing in his ears accompanied with a cacophony of his heart pumping; blood rushing to his ears. He swings upwards, knocking X-24 off of him as he makes the uphill battle to his feet.

\--this is it this is it this is _it--_

X-24 recovers faster than him, crawling back towards Bruce before he can gather his bearings, just mindlessly fighting the creature running back towards him. It scares him, scares him really _badly_ that this thing is so much more than he is--and he’s getting too old, he’s the Wolverine but he’s tired, he really is--

Bruce directly stabs X-24 in the stomach, yelling out of rage as he pulls his claws out, red streaking the silver shiny and bright. X-24 headbutts him _hard_ , and Bruce stumbles backwards before punching the other in the arm, more metal jutting out from the other side. Acid pumping in his veins, letting out screams of anger as he cuts X-24 deep--

\--Elyse screams suddenly, from somewhere, and Bruce twists his head around to look, _no no please god no_ \--

\--X-24 wraps a hand around Bruce’s neck and throws him to the ground, as if he was nothing more than a limp doll. He steps on Bruce’s torso, digging his heel into the former’s wound, and Bruce feels himself unraveling, pain streaking his vision.

He almost misses the scream cutting through the ringing in his ears, a blonde figure leaping onto X-24’s back, throwing him onto the ground as Elyse repeatedly stabs him in the neck. Bruce struggles to move his feet to stand, and X-24 twists around to run the length of his claws through the woman’s leg before tossing her off of him, denting the side of the truck when she hits it.

Blind rage filling Bruce when he gets up, running towards the other figure again, but he’s not _thinking,_ and the clone clambers to its feet in time to meet him head on. The metal of their claws ring out as they slide and bump off each other--Bruce missteps, stumbling and X-24 pushes his claws directly into Bruce’s stomach.

Oh. _Oh._ X-24 stirs Bruce’s stomach with his claws as if he’s nothing more than just cloth, and Bruce falls back when X-24 lets go, attempting to move, to _crawl_ _away_ , but the latter is faster. No remorse in those empty eyes as he bends to drag Bruce along, stabbing him again with his claw and pulling him across the dirt. Bruce fights as hard as he can, with every last ounce of strength, but it’s not enough, it’s not enough it’s not going to be _enough_ \--

X-24 lifts Bruce up, only to bring him down again, driving a thick root of a log through his chest, wood jutting out from the right side of his body pushing away muscle and through his lungs and breaking his fucking ribs--

X-24 raises his arm, blades shiny in the sunlight, ready to deliver the final blow.

\-- _oh god oh god did Lawrence die thinking I had killed him did Adam forget about us because he didn’t want to watch us die did Peake die thinking I hadn’t tried to save him did James die not knowing I loved him oh god I’m sorry I’m sorry Elyse I’m sorry_ \--

A gunshot goes off, and Bruce watches his own brain shatter--or rather, what it might look like if he was a young, emotionless version of him. X-24 collapses in front of him, unmoving. Broken. _Still._

By contrast, Elyse drops the gun and nearly stumbles over, claws unhinging from between her knuckles and swinging down at the log. She chops away at the wood holding Bruce in place, the latter groaning in pain with every strike, the wood rattling in his torso. He can feel it all, _all of it at once_ \--

He slides along the log as he’s cut loose, but it’s too late at this point, isn’t it? Elyse’s eyes are shiny and scared, like a doe’s.  Bruce searches for Elyse’s hand, blood coating their hands slick and he almost slips out of her grip but she holds on, because that’s all she can do.

She’s crying now, she’s crying and Bruce doesn’t know--Bruce doesn’t know--

“Go,” he says, one word but it hurts him to say, hurts him more than just in his chest. He’s not gonna make it. She needs to-- “ _go_ , Elyse.”

“No, no no no,” she’s crying and it won’t stop, he’s never seen her like this before, so vulnerable, chest heaving as she sobs. “No, please Bruce, please--”

Bruce knows he won’t make it. He’s known for a while.

He thinks Elyse knows it too.

\--but he had wanted to die, hadn’t he? He’d finally found something that was worth fighting for; made him feel less alone and now he was actually going to be alone, and this time it was _forever_ \--

He tries to lift his other hand up and puts in on her cheek, watches the Greek tragedy play out above them; a pathetic excuse for a goodbye. “Don’t be what they made you, Elyse,” and he keeps saying her name, because she needs to be reminded that _what_ she is isn’t as important as _who_ she is.

Elyse closes her eyes, puts her forehead against his. There’s blood coating his forehead, his chest, his hands. “Bruce,” she keeps pleading, sounding more like an apology, a cry for him to stay than a goodbye. “ _Bruce_.”

A breeze. The shade. The smell of dirt. Bruce feels comfortable, for a brief, fleeting moment.

( _Maybe Adam and Elyse would have gotten along. Why did Lawrence say they were so similar? Is it because they both saw the world the same way--but Adam learned to believe he was better than the people who hurt him, while Elyse still had the chance to grow?_

_Was it because the seeds for world-breaker, Magneto, were sown in Adam by Lawrence’s hands, while the seeds in Elyse were not?)_

It’s almost funny; it’s almost there but not quite. Borderline laugh worthy. He’s almost scared to close his eyes--but Bruce thinks if he closes his eyes, he might hear the ocean. Smell it. Feel the warm sun on his face. He sees Lawrence sitting in front of him, drink in his hand; sees James standing beside him, laughing; sees Peake on the deck, water shiny and almost sharp behind him.

Elyse’s hand. Still wrapped around his. Her smile. Her hair, tucked behind an ear. They’re on the boat, no, they’re--they’re in the forest. A breeze. The smell of dirt. The shade.

On his back.

Elyse squeezes his hand.

She’s whispering his name-- _Bruce, Bruce_ \--face streaked with tears, shaking not far off like a dead leaf in the wind, head resting against his. It was warm, but Bruce had never felt so cold. His heart breaks a little. Or rather, what’s left of his heart breaks a lot.

“So this is what it feels like.”

It hurts. He’d forgotten. It _hurts,_ and he’d forgotten.

Bruce isn’t scared anymore. The feeling is replaced. It’s relief. It’s family.

It’s _home_.

  
Bruce closes his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i miiiiight make a dvd commentary of this if anyone's interested so let me know if u'd like to see something like that!! 
> 
> thanks for reading/leaving positive feedback everyone! <3 this is the monster that is 51 fucking pages on google docs and ate up a lot of my free time. i appreciate all your support. 
> 
> (up next: killemses beach fic?? idk)


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